How does immigration reshape American workers’ identities? Kim Voss’s research examines the dilemmas currently facing the U.S. labor movement, compares the resonance of claims made on behalf of citizens and noncitizens in social movements, and investigates the shifting terrain of U.S. higher education.
Her current research investigates the resonance of frames used in the immigrant rights movement, examines dilemmas currently facing the U.S. labor movement, analyzes the shifting terrain of U.S. higher education, and surveys precarity in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in academic journals in sociology, political science, and demography, she has written or edited six books: Rallying for Immigrant Rights (2011, with I. Bloemraad), Hard Work: Remaking the American Labour Movement (2006, with R. Fantasia), Rebuilding Labour: Organizing and Organizers in the New Union Movement (2004, with R. Milkman), Des Synidcats Domestiques: Repression Patronale et Resistance Syndicale Aux Etas-Unis (2003, with R. Fantasia), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996, with five Berkeley colleagues), and The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labour and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (1993).
Her newest publications are a 2022 article in Social Problems: "Persistent Inequalities in College Completion, 1980-2010" (with Michael Hout and Kristin George), two 2020 articles in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: “Movement or Moment? Lessons from the pro-immigrant movement in the United States and contemporary challenges,” (with I. Bloemraad) and “The Limits of Rights: Claims-making on behalf of immigrants” (with F. Silva and I. Bloemraad), and one 2020 book chapter, “Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me: Shifting Targets, Changing Repertoires, and Internal Democracy in the U.S. Labor Movement” (with Pablo Gaston), in James Jasper and Braydon King, Protesters and Their Targets, Temple University Press.
